A rear-end collision took place today at around 2:30pm or 3pm at the Laoximen metro stop on Line 10 (some reports say Yuyuan Gardens Station, but we’re taking the most recent reports.) Due to a signal failure in Xintiandi Station, the trains reportedly had switched to manual control, which is where things went wrong.

We’re still waiting for clear info on exactly what happened, but one of the trains was reportedly sitting at Laoximen Station for 30 minutes before the collision happened ….

Update 6 [5:48pm]: Shanghai Metro reports that the total number of injured passengers now stands at 212, with 3 seriously injured ….

Update 9 [5:56pm]: Shanghai Party Secretary Yu Zhengsheng (俞正声) is already on his way to visit injured passengers at the Jiaotong University-affiliated Shanghai Number 9 People’s Hospital ….

Update 10 [6:11pm]: According to multiple Chinese sources, Shanghai CASCO Signal Corporation (上海卡丝柯信号有限公司), the company that provided signals for Line 10, also provided the signal technology involved in the Wenzhou rail disaster. (h/t to @MrBaoPanrui)

News of the crash spread quickly on the site as passengers like Weibo user Ji Fashi used their phones to spread word of the incident, as well as upload images they had recorded, including the photo above. Other users have been busy spreading these first-person reports; the picture above, for example, has been retweeted at least 45,000 times, and probably way more than that given that many people have re-uploaded the photo from their own accounts rather than passing along the original upload.

The accident quickly rocketed to the top of Sina’s trending topics list, where it has remained all afternoon, accruing over a million comments in the space of a few hours. As with the train crash, many Weibo users are furious, and someone dug up an old Xinhua piece from 2005 titled “Shanghai Will Never Have a Subway Accident” that hasn’t helped calm anyone down.

State news media reported that the line’s signal system failed around 2:10 p.m. and that supervisors were directing subway trains by telephone before the accident occurred.

It was not the first time that the line has encountered problems.

Two months ago, a signaling problem on the same line caused one train to take a wrong turn; some passengers even reported that the train began to run backward, posing the threat of a collision, according to a report in the state-run news media.

The Shanghai Metro insisted that the equipment supplier for line 10 was not the same as the supplier of the equipment that failed in the Wenzhou accident. But a news release found online shows that the equipment used on the line 10 signal was produced by Casco, a joint venture between the French company Alstom and a Chinese company. Casco produced the signaling equipment for the high-speed line in Wenzhou ….

And according to Xinhua, Tuesday’s crash came after the third signal failure on line 10 during the past three months.

About five hours after the accident, Shanghai Metro posted that the No.10 line has resumed service. And an hour after that, an apology posting similar to the original version was restored.

It’s not clear why the postings were deleted and reposted. But blogger Lengyun wrote, “You can compare the wording of the two postings then you should be able to understand the thinking of the propaganda system.”

Because Twitter is blocked in Mainland China, many people have turned to its Chinese counterpart, Sina Weibo, to vent their anger.

“Last time one train on Line 2 went into the wrong direction,” a Sina Weibo user named “China” wrote. ”They said they were fine-tuning it, and there would be no crashes. How could they explain it now?”

“Accidents one after another, what happened to China!” Sina Weibo user “Jiaboshi” wrote.

“Faulty products are threatening our lives!” “Kanlai9851″ wrote.

The users’ thinly veiled subtext referred to the deadly Wenzhou high-speed train crash in July that killed 40 passengers and injured 192. The Wenzhou crash is seen as somewhat of a watershed moment for the Chinese micro-blogging social network when it, despite being heavily monitored and at times even censored, exploded with outrage.